


Pomegranates and Wheat

by Eristastic



Series: Under(fairy)tales [11]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Alternate Universe - Mythology, Drama, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-26
Updated: 2016-08-10
Packaged: 2018-07-18 11:07:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7312564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eristastic/pseuds/Eristastic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It shouldn't be difficult for the imprisoned son of the harvest goddess to choose to leave or stay with the god of the dead. And it isn't, but in utterly the wrong way.</p><p>[Hades/Persephone Greek mythology AU]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Shay (AO3 user valety) suggested a Hades/Persephone AU to which I was 'yeah, I guess that'd be cool' and then they clarified they meant Asriel as Persephone and since then I haven't been able to stop thinking about it.
> 
> I was aiming for a climax-type feel to this without actually having to write a full story, so...maybe that comes across...maybe it doesn't...life is continually surprising...
> 
> (For those unfamiliar with the original myth, Hades - the god of death - stole Persephone, daughter of Demeter - goddess of the harvest - and kept her in the underworld. Eating underworld food means you stay there forever, which is the important part for this story)

Asriel was starving.

It had been so long since he’d last eaten anything, and he hadn’t planned on getting snatched away almost directly afterwards so it hadn’t been much. A light snack: fruit from one of his mother’s orchards, he thought. He kept thinking. It was difficult to get it off his mind, especially when food was so close and the only thing keeping him from it was the knowledge of what eating here would do to him.

Gods didn’t _need_ to eat, no, but it was a preference, and he was suffering.

The lands of the dead didn’t offer much in the way of distraction, although they made a commendable effort. The gardens were irretrievably dark: he was surrounded by obsidian statues of various heroes (Asriel couldn’t recognise them all, but really, he didn’t think he could be expected to remember every hero that made a name for themself) and they all seemed to loom over him threateningly. Curling snow-white paws in the creamy fabric of his chiton, he walked a little faster.

The inner gardens, Chara had said, because the outer gardens were either full of tortured souls or decidedly happier ones; they didn’t offer much in the way of privacy. The fruit orchards (so like his mother’s) weren’t even a hundred paces away, but he ignored them as best he could, winding his way through a palace he still barely knew, making his way to Chara.

Perhaps that was simply what he did now. He’d been ripped from a peaceful (and idle) life with his mother, doing much as he liked while she weathered the responsibilities of being the goddess of the harvest, and now he had nothing. Nothing but Chara and the shadows that swarmed around them. He kept walking.

Fluted passageways and onyx-pillared corridors aside, the palace was unwelcoming to an extreme. The halls echoed with every footstep – and, sometimes, the wails of the dead – so much so that Asriel had to make a concerted effort to remember why he was doing this. It was for them: of course it was. It had never been a case of waiting for his mother to come and rescue him, because it hadn’t been imprisonment at all. Not since he’d seen them, because from that moment on, for weeks of staying as their guest and slowly growing closer to them (to the extent that anyone could), he had stayed for Chara.

The idea was shameful, and he felt the shame like the burning aftertaste of bad alcohol down his throat. He hadn’t eaten anything so far –a way to pretend, if anyone asked, that he was planning to return home – but that flimsy excuse for protocol had shattered when they’d asked for him for the first time after days of silence. He’d hurried from the rooms he’d been allotted, without even thinking about it. They called; he came. Like a dog desperate for its master’s touch.

Shameful.

The inner gardens weren’t gardens at all, not like the fields outside were. They were an imitation, built of polished stone and sand, and the passing resemblance they bore with trees or flowers tended to vanish if you looked for more than a moment. But Chara belonged there. They were waiting for him, their back to a curved construction that looked something like a rib, if it was twisted almost past the point of recognition. Hearing his sandals crunch in the sand, they looked up.

Asriel smiled nervously. He knew the moves to this dance, so he kept his hands behind him and moved to stand opposite them with a set distance between them, still smiling. Kept his head low, his shoulders slightly hunched, to minimise his height. Kept his expression demure beyond anything he actually felt.

In contrast, they looked blanker than he’d ever seen them, despite the wide smile they always wore. Without emotion, they said, “Your mother’s been trying to get you back.”

Ever since he’d left, yes. “I know.”

“It’s astonishing,” they said without a trace of astonishment. “I cannot remember being the focus of so much attention until now. Perhaps I should have kidnapped a promising young god before.”

Was that resentment? Was _this_ what they’d called him for, for the first time after that night the two of them had almost…

“I don’t…I don’t blame you, you know.” His fists tightened in the hem of his chiton, trying to get this point across, again. They never seemed to believe him; they wouldn’t let themself rest for stealing him.

“No? More fool you,” they smirked, looking away so their silk-straight hair fell off one shoulder. The crooked grin he’d seen that night and the (nearly) unfettered enjoyment of his company were gone. In their place was a hollow smile. The stone sculptures around Chara rose like grotesque wings, if you looked at them from a certain angle.

Asriel said, “I still don’t know why you did it, but I don’t blame you. You’ve been nothing but good to me! I mean,” he grimaced, “admittedly, it’s a bit dark here. And I can’t say anything for the constant moaning and curses. But I don’t _mind_ it.”

They said nothing, nor did they look at him. It took a second to realise that the slight hint of movement he’d seen from them was their fists tightening.

He wished they’d just talk to him. That was always their problem: he did his best to be approachable and talkative, but they barely did anything but listen. And yes, perhaps they were beautiful when they did that and their attention was fully on him: perhaps he forgot about how bony they were, how discoloured their skin, how deep the bags under their eyes, how lank their hair, but he’d still like conversation. Regardless of how attractive they were or weren’t compared to the rows and rows of well-muscled, golden-skinned, burnished-haired gods he was usually surrounded with, he was lonely.

It was lonely, being surrounded by nothing but empty rooms and ghosts.

“Why did you do it, then?” he found himself saying in a tone too accusatory to excuse away. Why wouldn’t they look at him? “You call me a fool for not blaming you, you’ve admitted several times you regret it, but why did you _do_ it?”

The air changed, but that was to be expected. The underworld tended to reflect Chara’s mood, no matter how skilled they were at clamping it down. Their mouth remained a geometrically perfect smile, and they didn’t open it.

Asriel swallowed. “Can’t you tell me? I thought we were close enough for that. I thought we-” He cut himself off before he said something stupid. It was too late: they’d looked at him, and the air was so cold he thought he might freeze. Perhaps it would be better like that.

Turning away from them, he bit his lip and breathed steadily for some time. They certainly didn’t break the silence. They never would. They’d never cared, clearly. They were just as unfeeling, as cold and lacking in empathy as everyone had always said. The few sparks he’d felt – the few times they’d smiled gently for once, or he’d thought that there was something more to their words – were delusions. He’d deluded himself into thinking he was wanted.

He wasn’t: he was another minor god, a pawn in the game of this superior being.

It was so unfair.

“Well,” he lifted his hands up, “I suppose you’re right. I was a fool for staying here. I should have tried to escape the second I realised how much you regretted kidnapping me. I’m sorry for making your life harder by staying.”

Like the fool he claimed to be, he’d expected some kind of reaction. There was nothing. The air did not change and there was no sound from behind him. They did not reach out to him. So he laughed. “It’s a good thing I never ate anything, isn’t it? Now I can leave and you’ll never be bothered by me again. Isn’t that what you want? You regret ever seeing me.”

He turned to say one last, cutting line, but stopped dead. Chara looked as if something was cracking inside of them and they had no way to stop it. Their smile was horrific, baring teeth that would better suit a predator, and they were so tense that they weren’t even breathing.

Asriel couldn’t understand. Reaching out a hand to help (as if he could), he had to stop himself in his tracks and back away a pace, reminding himself that whatever this was, he wasn’t wanted. He’d never been wanted.

But he couldn’t stop himself from asking, “What’s _wrong_?”

“I…don’t,” they choked. Willpower alone held their body together in a tapestry of tension and control. “I don’t regret it. Ever seeing you. I wanted…I thought you…You’re too bright. You’re brightness itself. I’m not. I- I. I didn’t know you…”

The clouds overhead – as unnatural as any of the weather in the underworld – shuddered. They rumbled with claps of thunder as Chara’s jaw trembled. “I never regretted it. I had no one, no matter how I tried, and I saw you and I decided to be the demon they all played me up to be, but you never resented me. You were nothing I ever deserved!”

Lightning struck; souls in torment howled, far off.

“From the moment I saw you, you’ve been everything I dreamt of and I don’t know how to stand it, Asriel. I trapped you down here and I can’t…” –they rubbed a hand down their face, the smile distorting– “I can’t undo that. I would, in a second. I would send you back, far from me.”

“That isn’t what I want!” he managed to say, though the words were strangled as they left his throat. Hope, unbidden, blossomed in a wasteland.

“You should. This isn’t any place for living people to stay.”

“And what about you?”

They didn’t answer. It annoyed him, to the extent that frustration and the yearning for them to give up more, expose themself more, could be considered annoyance.

“You don’t deserve to be alone either,” he said firmly.

“I would ask the other gods before making bold statements like that,” they smiled. In the short silence, they’d regained that smile of theirs, and the thunder clouds had receded to the threat of rain.

“ _I_ wouldn’t. I would ask someone who actually knows you, not people who’ve forsaken you all your years of life.”

“You’d have to look very hard for someone like that.”

“Would I?” he asked weakly. “Wouldn’t a mirror be enough?”

They started and the smile faltered. A pause. “Maybe it would.”

That was a victory, and it sent his chest swelling with love. But they still refused to look him in the eye or do any of this properly. What ‘proper’ was, he didn’t know, but he did know that it wasn’t in a garden of stone, covered by thick grey clouds, with Chara not letting anything out of their jealously-held control unless it was ripped from their fingers. They had to let go, but he didn’t know how to make them. 

Would grand gestures be enough? He’d do anything, with the utmost honesty. So, trying not to shake too much, he said in an over-loud voice, “Chara, you know I-! I…I care about you, a lot, and I…I don’t mind that you’re the god of the dead, I don’t mind that you live… _here_. I don’t mind any of that! I don’t care about what everyone says about you because I know they’re lying, trying to find an easy scapegoat in you because you’re the one everyone already fears! I don’t care about them, because I lo-”

“ _Don’t_.”

The flurry of words died in his mouth when he saw them shaking their head with minute movements, their whole body shaking. There was a cold drop of something on his hand and he looked down at it, then up as rain began to drizzle. There was more screaming, he could hear, and the beginnings of tremors as the sand beneath his feet shifted. The whole kingdom was reacting. The whole land.

Tension held Chara’s body taut, as it always did, and he began to see the reason. It had never been like this before.

“I don’t mind,” he said again. “I’ve never minded. This…this doesn’t have to be difficult. Really, all it has to be is us.”

They laughed unpleasantly: not quite scorn, but certainly without amusement. “It cannot be simple with two people like us, after what I’ve done.”

“I said I didn’t mind.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that I did it, out of selfishness and spite and the gross desire to prove everyone right about me.”

“No, but it means there’s nothing wrong with trying to move past that and appreciating how I feel,” he snapped, and immediately reeled his emotions back in. A short temper would help no one: his mother had always said so. “All I’m asking is…please, I want to make this simple. I want to be here, but I want to be here with _you_. I want you to pay attention to me, not skirt around me like I’m made of ice and you’re afraid to melt me. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

“While I am still who I am, it does.”

“No, it doesn’t!” He had to take a moment to calm himself, and then, “I’m telling you it doesn’t, and I’ve told you it doesn’t for the past weeks. You _know_ how I feel about you, and I’m saying I don’t mind what you are or what you did when you kidnapped me! I don’t mind!”

The rain was soaking through his fur, through their hair, but their eyes were as unapologetically, intensely red as ever. They stared at him.

“You haven’t eaten,” they said, ludicrously.

It took a moment before the meaning of their words sunk in, and he flushed. “…No, but-”

“You’re here temporarily,” they smiled, beginning to walk away. “You’re here until your mother comes down to find you. You’re here as long as it takes for her to realise I won’t stop her. You ask me to believe you, but you give me no surety. You give me nothing to believe you’ll still be here in a week’s time. And what’s a week?” Their eyes turned to him, their hand on the door back inside the palace. “I want eternity.”

Asriel felt intoxicated by them. He could barely move, barely keep his thoughts from shredding to _nononono_ , but he screamed, “I’ll give it to you!”

Chara paused, half in, half out of the door. Their back was to him and he saw, then, how small they really were. Their shoulders were so fragile. “You won’t,” they said evenly. “I’m a demon, remember? The god of death does not marry. The god of death stays alone, surrounded by the dead. That is how it is. Your light will not be infected by my shadow.”

“And if I want it to be?” he hurled back at them, taking a few shaking steps forward on the sodden sand, unsure of where to stop because he wanted to go to them but he knew there was only so much they would allow. He couldn’t tell how far that went.

They didn’t answer him, not for a long time. It was too long for him: he tried again. “Please, Chara, I’m not…I can’t say anything for certain, but being with you makes me want to. I want to have eternity with you, I want to show you that everything they’ve ever said about you is wrong, I want…I want to be here with you, whether it’s dark or not. It doesn’t _matter_. I just want you to be open with me and show me who you are when you’re not convincing yourself you can’t get close to me.”

They breathed a laugh. “That isn’t a ‘just’. That is a very tall order.”

“I’m being selfish,” he said. “You can be too. Please. If…if I can have all of you, then you’re welcome to all of me, and anything else I can give you. Whatever you are, whatever you want, you can have it. I’d do anything for you.”

The rain didn’t stop, but that meant nothing. There was an artificial sun too, glinting through the clouds to set the rain ablaze with sunlight until everything sparkled. Asriel never had been able to tell what the different weathers meant, but he thought he had some idea now.

Torturously slowly, Chara turned back to him. He stepped forwards. This close, he towered over them such that they had to raise their chin to look him in the eyes. The arch of the door kept their face in a slight shadow, but it was no difficulty to see their expression: smiling as if doing so was the only thing that would stop them from ripping their throat apart.

“I’d do _anything_ for you,” he repeated.

They raised their hand in front of him. On it, a pomegranate rested, split open and red as globules of dried blood.

“Then eat,” they said. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't plan on a continuation for this, but many compelling arguments were given for a smut sequel (thank you to AO3 users valety and feralphoenix) so here we are, I suppose. I'm not really sure anymore.
> 
> Warning for a hint of pain play

In the end, to no one’s surprise, eternity was impossible for them. After Asriel’s mother came down to the underworld, gave him the scolding of his life, gave Chara the scolding of _their_ life, reluctantly listened to their sheepish explanations and apologies, decided to sympathise with them and organised everything properly, they were only left with half of eternity. Half was better than nothing. It was better than what Chara had expected.

They had, of course, refused to allow themself to expect anything.

In their experience, expectations should be based on experience, and they had none that led them to believe a bright, delightful young god would want anything to do with them. In the first six months he was away, memories of his attentions were all that kept them afloat. It was an odd feeling. They were so used to being grounded in their world of sand and bone polished to a sickly sheen – regrets and resentment mixed up into marrow to thicken it – that to be drowning was a novelty. Perhaps he should have elicited different feelings in them, but the short of it was that he didn’t. They felt at sea, suffocated by something warm and pleasant to the touch. It slipped through their fingers; they couldn’t control it, but they didn’t think they were foolish for enjoying it. It was only because of his ardency that they could. Half an eternity, they could accept, provided he longed for them all the other half.

With devotion of that calibre, they might begin to believe, but – naturally – it all rested perilously on his return. They needed to know if he was still theirs.

That day, Chara was restless. Duties and responsibilities were run through mechanically as if they were a doll, but since nothing ever showed on their face anyway, it was unlikely anyone noticed. Wisps – ghosts that had lost their lives so long ago they could barely remember they had once had them – rarely noticed anything. They were the perfect workforce. But hours dripped by slowly, a heavy cloud cover blanketing the lands of the dead impartially, and very little seemed able to stifle the thunderous dread that Chara began to entertain.

It was not until the self-styled evening that anything changed. Resigned to an emphatically indifferent numbness in place of thought, since that was preferable, they retired to their own quarters for a few hours, and found themself in their inner gardens. These were their pride and joy, in the same way that a farmer might look favourably on the first tree they had successfully grown themself, be it sickly or barren. It was a disharmonious collection of sculptures shedding impractically long shadows no matter the weather, and they liked it. They liked the sand sinking between their bare toes.

So they walked through it for some time, thinking of nothing. When constantly surrounded by tortured souls (or, at the very least, souls that had more than a few regrets), one grew used to blocking everything out, whether outside or inside. It was simply easier that way, so they trailed along the paths in patterns they knew by heart. They were just turning around the corner of a bestial twist of piebald stone when the pergola at the centre of the garden came into sight, and there they stopped. Asriel did not: he all but leapt towards them, face lit up in an inexplicable smile.

“You’re here,” they said calmly, but no one could have missed the sudden wind blowing through the garden, hurling sand into whirlwinds that never quite touched them.

“Of course I’m here!” he said happily, stopping just in front of them, smiling blissfully. It was totally out of place – a buttercup in a forest reduced to cinders – but the air around them grew warm. “Did I…Did I get the dates wrong?” he asked, a little nervously. “I feel like I can’t have, since I’ve been counting them down, but…”

“No, you’re not wrong.” They hated their voice: the flatness, the lack of emotion that could have set him at ease. They had nothing to give.

But he was smiling. “Then why are you surprised? Did you think I wouldn’t come back? You did, didn’t you?” He put a hand on his hip, totally at ease. “I _told_ Mum you would. She still doesn’t have the best opinion of you, you know – she thought you were going to be waiting ready with chains to keep me down here – but she did give me several talents of food for you, so that’s, um, waiting with some of the wisps. I asked them to put it away but you know they never listen to me. Not that I think any of it’s in danger of going off quite yet.” He mock-shivered. “It’s not any warmer down here, is it?”

Shame came over them, hot and fierce, which only served to send the wind up in flurries. They tried to soften their expression. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay! You’re worth a little cold.”

In their own experience, they were rarely worth the time of day, but it was nice of him to say it. They smiled: a small thing, unsure and dry. With wind blowing his fur every which way, Asriel seemed frozen by the very sight of them. They weren’t sure why, so they tried to smile a little wider, with a little more warmth, and said, “I’m glad you’re back.”

“C-can I kiss you?”

They blinked in surprise, all wind dying to sudden mugginess, and then they leaned upwards to kiss him first. A minor lapse in control, but his eyes had been so wide in anticipation, his lips parted invitingly. And he fell into their kiss as if he was grateful for it, so they couldn’t believe they’d made a mistake. His arms pulling them closer, they closed their eyes and forgot about a world where this wasn’t possible.

Asriel had made it possible.

 

There was so much that _was_ possible now that had once been inconceivable to them. The warmth of another’s body against their frigid skin; the soft words of a lover blushing at their touch; the sheer concept of being wanted. Under the trellised roof of the pergola, strung with stone roses, it felt like another world, and one they’d missed for six months. The remains of a feast were laid out on the table: it had been a mixture of food from the underworld and that which Asriel had brought with him. The candles were lit around the garden, flashing against every smooth curve and twist of ebony monstrosity, but the pergola itself was beautiful.

White stone pillars rose up out of curved paving stones, holding a low table and reclining chairs in the main body, but leading to a bower at the very end. They were there now, in a pocket of space of their own: cut off from everything else by gauzy curtains on one side and rigid stone vines on the other, and Asriel was on the cushions beneath them. It would have been difficult to say when this position had been achieved, but it had, and now he was lying down, his legs caught between their knees, seemingly content with their eyes on him.

“You can laugh as much as you like,” he was saying with mock affront, playing with the folds of their robes that fell within easy reach, “I can assure that it wasn’t funny at the time.”

“I’m not laughing,” they said quite truthfully.

“No, but don’t think I didn’t notice that the air got dry all of a sudden,” he smiled smugly, twisting the material around his fingers.

They decided it would be best not to comment on that or the dryness of the air which was only increasing. They felt pleased. So, their expression of neutrality softening a little around the eyes, they asked in a voice that might have been called indulgent if it had come from anyone else, “But how did you get away, in the end?”

“Get away? Oh, we didn’t,” he grimaced. “Undyne wanted to stay and fight, but I thought that might be…inadvisable. So I managed to convince her to come with me. We ran for the river, but it’s not very easy, running with two amphorae each, and I confess I stumbled a bit, and then she had to wait for me – shouting at me to use my inner strength, whatever that is, and be fierce and all that. Anyway, he caught up to us and screamed at us until the whole forest shook, and then I had to physically restrain Undyne from attacking him, and then he took the wine back and said he’d have killed us if I wasn’t related to Mum.” He sighed. “Then we went back and Mum very nearly did kill us. I’ve _never_ been told off like that in my life. Not even when she came down here, but I think that’s because she was just so relieved to see me then. At any rate, I wasn’t nearly bad-mannered enough to point out that _actually_ , Undyne was the one who wanted to do it to impress some dragon she likes, not me, so we both got punished.” He scowled.

“A dragon?”

“Well, I think so,” he shrugged, settling more comfortably against the pillows. “She won’t tell me anything specific. When I ask, she just tells me that love, or romantic love, is for ninnies. But don’t get her started on platonic love, or whatever they’re calling it nowadays,” he shuddered. “She becomes recklessly enthusiastic about that, you know, and even I feel it when my head is rubbed that hard. I’m not _that_ thick-skulled.”

Chara smiled a little, sitting up over him. “You’re not thick-skulled at all. I’ve never thought so.”

“Oh! Oh, well…” He seemed to be blushing – the end of his nose flushing attractively – and he let his hands drop from their robes, gazing up at them shyly. “Thank you.”

They accepted this with a nod, reaching a hand down to the side of his face idly. To think that he was here, that he had come back to them, was almost too precious a thought to be entertained. But he was here, gloriously.

“You’re so beautiful,” he said, like he couldn’t help it, and they stiffened, their hand freezing against his cheek. Still watching them with eyes like liquid honey, he turned his head to nuzzle into their palm, kissing the heel softly, and their thighs began to shake. A fraction only, but he noticed. A smile widened on his face and he kissed their hand a last time, drawing his tongue up to their thumb, and turned back to face them properly.

“I’ve missed you so much,” he said. But no, it was barely speech: it was breath, like the prayers they rarely – if ever – received: the gentle ones, full of reverence and adoration. They bent, robes spilling over the cushions, and took his face between their hands, kissing him. He responded so pleasingly that the corners of their mouth turned up. Overhead, on the onyx roses cast like carapaces over the trellis, rain began to patter down. Asriel smiled against their lips.

There was so little they could do for him: they knew that, wretchedly. They couldn’t say something as simple as ‘I missed you’ unless pushed past the boundaries of comfort. They could only kiss him, pushing their legs into soft silks and his softer fur, running hands along his body to the places they knew he liked. The bases of his horns, the small of his back, the curves of his hips, the undersides of his thighs – he jerked at their feather-light touch, whining into their mouth. It was needy, shameless, and given to them without a second thought. They drank him in.

Outside, the rain had stopped, and with a last bite of his lip, they sat up. What they looked like to him, they couldn’t begin to imagine, but he didn’t take his eyes off them as they moved down his legs, sitting on their heels at his feet. Brushing hair behind their ear, they leant down and pushed back his cotton chiton to take him in their mouth. He gasped – a broken, dying sound. Though not yet fully aroused, he was still bigger than they could take, and they used their hands, dripping with rose-scented oil from blue glass bottles left tactfully on the cushions. It didn’t take much time or skill until he was throbbing under their palms, a slave to every movement of their tongue. Words streamed from his mouth: love, need, pleas, splintered and spun together until nothing he said was quite coherent.

They sat up, surveying him as they worked him with one hand. His hands were splayed to the sides, cushions ripped to tatters under his claws, his head thrown back so the lines of his throat were starkly apparent. He moved to their rhythm, rolling his hips up into their hand, hitched groans stuttering from his mouth. He was theirs: a vision of light and love, brought to begging the god of death for release. At the merest word, he would be on his knees, pleasuring them; at the crook of a finger, he would roll over and expose himself for them to do with as they pleased. They knew how he’d do it: blush, hide his face, but do it all willingly. He was theirs. For the eternity he’d promised. Breath ragged, he turned his head to look at them, and managed to smile weakly.

He was theirs, and it was the simplest deal imaginable: in return, he could have everything of them.

While he was watching them, they bent down to lick him again, and his breath broke into a groan. Fabric ripped under his hands; slow circles of their fingers along the bones of his hips and the veins pulsing under the skin of his groin had him jerking up into their mouth. They pulled off at his warning and he spent, crying out beautifully.

As he came back to himself, they admired him. Their own blood was pulsing to their hips, but they didn’t pay it any mind. He was everything: they took in each minute movement that they had caused in him. Satisfaction and happiness wafted off him as he smiled, reaching a lazy hand up to stroke their hair. He wanted them.

“You’re so _good_ at that,” he sighed happily. The smile died a little (as if they wouldn’t notice) when he said, “You must have been practicing.”

“Of course I haven’t,” they replied, carefully cleaning him up with the cloth that had been provided alongside the oil.

“You really haven’t?”

“No.”

“But other gods-”

“I know perfectly well what other gods do,” they said, irritated by the distant clap of thunder they let slip. “It has no bearing on me.” They wrung the cloth out and when they looked back at him, he was beaming as if he knew no other way to be.

A little awkwardly, he sat up and wrapped his arms around their neck, kissing them softly on the forehead, nose, ears, with easy, innocent affection. “It’s been so _long_ ,” he complained pettishly. “I…I haven’t…with anyone either. I could only think of you. I don’t _need_ anyone else if I have you.”

There was an unvoiced question and they answered it. “You have me.”

Almost purring, he kissed down their neck, the smell of roses thick between them. The air was too humid. “I want to do it for you too,” he breathed against them.

“You don’t need to.”

“I want to. I’ve wanted to for so long. Would you mind?” The question seemed calculated to sound neutral, but it was imperfect and his efforts went to waste. They could only hear the raw need, but that was alright. They, too, needed.

“If you’d like to, I don’t mind.”

Thunder growled.

Paying every imaginable attention to their body, he urged them to lie down, brushing their hair out of their face as they looked up at him with the wide smile they thought he’d prefer. He kissed it, gently, and shook his head.

“Don’t force yourself like that. You know I can’t believe that smile of yours.”

Infallible emotionlessness reclaimed their expression, but he didn’t seem to mind. He smiled, a real one, even when they showed very little outward reaction to anything he did: every kiss, all the love offered their body was soaked in, but they couldn’t bring themself to react. One did not lose control, even when it would have been the most rapturous relief to do so.

Lightning crackled, far away, as he unpinned their robes, pushing them out of the way respectfully, as if they were anything to be respected. They almost shivered when he kissed down to their navel, licking over the curve of their belly, but that would have been folly. Their breathing was steady. He slicked his fingers in oil, and their breathing was still steady. He massaged their thighs, gently pushing them apart while kissing the discoloured skin on the inner sides, and stroked them.

The sky seemed to break apart with lightning. There was a satisfied smile on his face – they could see, because they couldn’t take their eyes off him – as he coaxed them open, and the only sound they made was when he scraped his claws against them by mistake. Apologies spilled from his mouth, but they shook their head, firmly replacing his hand and looking him in the eye, willing him to understand that it didn’t matter to them. Perhaps he did, or perhaps he just obeyed orders, but either way he switched to careful strokes, using the pads of his palm. There were one or two more white-hot lines of brief pain, and they didn’t mind. It didn’t slow their heart-rate, now accelerated past repair, and it didn’t stop the heaving thunder around the pergola. When he turned his hands to stroke their thighs and used his mouth instead, the thunder raged until it was deafening.

Howling winds that never touched them; glimpses of angrily grey clouds through the trellis above Chara’s head; lightning shocking the world into tremors, and Asriel paid attention to none of it. He used his tongue, his lips, breathing words against them futilely, and they finally gave in to the merest arch of their back.

Asriel saw them as someone worthy of this. Someone he wanted to do this to. Thoughts became blurred: a mess of security and surety that they should never have allowed themself but which they did, and they thought they might even have spoken as they reached climax.

As if in a single sheet, rain poured down outside, pounding onto the stone. The storm receded, rain left in its place, and Chara opened their eyes.

To nobody’s surprise, Asriel was smiling at them. Satisfied that they were alright, he fell down to lie next to them, reaching an arm around their shoulders. They turned a fraction to push their cheek into his chest, moving instinctively closer to his warmth.

“That was a nice storm,” he said pleasantly. They could only agree.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had no idea what a pergola was until I searched for something between a bower and a gazebo, so you can't say this sort of disgraceful business isn't educational, at least.

**Author's Note:**

> For anyone thinking this is just a role-swapped Necropolis, I think so as well.


End file.
